"The Irony of Southern History"

From C. Vann Woodward's The Burden of Southern History

In a time when nationalism sweeps everything else before it, as it does at present, the regional
historian is likely to be oppressed by a sense of his unimportance. America is the all-important
subject, and national ideas, national institutions, and national policies are the themes that compel
attention. Foreign peoples, eager to know what this New-World colossus means to them and their
immediate future, are impatient with details of regional
variations, and Americans, intent on the need for national
unity, tend to minimize their importance. New England,
the West, and other regions are occasionally permitted to
speak for the nation. But the South is thought to be hedged
about with peculiarities that set it apart as unique. As a
standpoint from which to write American history it is
regarded as eccentric and, as a background for an historian,
something of a handicap to be overcome.

Of the eccentric position of the South in the nation there
are admittedly many remaining indications. I do not think,
however, that this eccentricity need be regarded as entirely a handicap. In fact, I think that it
could possibly be turned
to advantage by the Southern historian, both in under-
standing American history and in interpreting it to non-
Americans. For from a broader point of view it is not the
South but America that is unique among the peoples of
the world. This peculiarity arises out of the American
legend of success and victory, a legend that is not shared
by any other people of the civilized world. The collective
will of this country has simply never known what it means
to be confronted by complete frustration. Whether by luck,
by abundant resources, by ingenuity, by technology, by
organizing cleverness, or by sheer force of arms America
has been able to overcome every major historic crisis-
economic, political, or foreign-with which it has had to
cope. This remarkable record has naturally left a deep
imprint upon the American mind. It explains in large
part the national faith in unlimited progress, in the efficacy
of material means, in the importance of mass and speed,
the worship of success, and the belief in the invincibility
of American arms.

The legend has been supported by an unbroken succession of victorious wars. Battles have
been lost, and whole
campaigns - but not wars. In the course of their national
history Americans, who have been called a bellicose though
unmartial people, have fought eight wars, and so far without so much as one South African
fiasco such as England
encountered in the heyday of her power. This unique
good fortune has isolated America, I think rather dangerously, from the common experience of
the rest of mankind, all the great peoples of which have without exception
known the bitter taste of defeat and humiliation. It has
fostered the tacit conviction that American ideals, values,
and principles inevitably prevail in the end. That conviction has never received a name, nor
even so much explicit
formulation as the old concept of Manifest Destiny. It is
assumed, not discussed. And the assumption exposes us to
the temptation of believing that we are somehow immune
from the forces of history.

The country that has come nearest to approximating the
American legend of success and victory is England. The
nearness of continental rivals and the precariousness of
the balance of power, however, bred in the English an
historical sophistication that prevented the legend from
flourishing as luxuriantly as it has in the American climate.
Only briefly toward the end of the Victorian period did
the legend threaten to get out of hand in England. Arnold
J. Toynbee has recalled those piping days in a reminiscent
passage. "I remember watching the Diamond Jubilee procession myself as a small boy," he
writes. "I remember the atmosphere. It was: well, here we are on the top of the world, and we
have arrived at this peak to stay there - forever! There is, of course, a thing called history, but
history
is something unpleasant that happens to other people. We
are comfortably outside all that. I am sure, if I had been
a small boy in New York in 1897 I should have felt the
same. Of course, if I had been a small boy in 1897 in the
Southern part of the United States, I should not have felt
the same; I should then have known from my parents that history had happened to my people
in my part of the
world."

The South has had its full share of illusions, fantasies,
and pretensions, and it has continued to cling to some of
them with an astonishing tenacity that defies explanation.
But the illusion that "history is something unpleasant that
happens to other people" is certainly not one of them - not in the face of accumulated evidence
and memory to
the contrary. It is true that there have been many Southern converts to the gospel of progress
and success, and
there was even a period following Reconstruction when
it seemed possible that these converts might carry a reluctant region with them. But the
conversion was never anywhere near complete. Full participation in the legend
of irresistible progress, success, and victory could, after
all, only be vicarious at best. For the inescapable facts of
history were that the South had repeatedly met with frustration and failure. It had learned what
it was to be faced
with economic, social, and political problems that refused
to yield to all the ingenuity, patience, and intelligence that
a people could bring to bear upon them. It had learned to
accommodate itself to conditions that it swore it would
never accept, and it had learned the taste left in the mouth
by the swallowing of one's own words. It had learned to
live for long decades in quite un-American poverty, and it
had learned the equally un-American lesson of submission.
For the South had undergone an experience that it could
share with no other part of America-though it is shared
by nearly all the peoples of Europe and Asia-the experience of military defeat, occupation, and
reconstruction.

Nothing about this history was conducive to the theory
that the South was the darling of divine providence.

2

In his book, The Irony of American History, Reinhold
Niebuhr conducts an astute analysis of national character
and destiny that emphasizes another set of American pretensions, which he calls the illusions
of innocence and
virtue. These illusions have their origins in both North
and South, though at a period before there was any distinct
regional consciousness. They were fostered by the two
great moral traditions of early national life, New England
Calvinism and Virginia deism of the Jeffersonian school.
While they differed upon theology, theocrats and deists
were agreed that their country was "God's American,
Israel," called out of a wicked and corrupt Old World
and set apart by Providence to create a new humanity and
restore man's lost innocence. I believe that Niebuhr would
agree that what I have described as the American legend
of success and victory has assisted in fostering and perpetuating these illusions of innocence
and virtue. At any rate, he demonstrates that these illusions have been preserved
past infancy and into national adulthood. Arriving at man's
estate, we have suddenly found ourselves in possession of
immense and undreamed of power and compelled to use
this power in ways that are not innocent and that cover
us with guilt. In clinging to our infant illusions of innocence along with our new power, writes
the theologian, we are "involved in ironic perils which compound the
experiences of Babylon and Israel"-the perils of overweening power and overweening
virtue.

Our opposite numbers in the world crisis, the Russian
Communists, are bred on illusions of innocence and virtue that parallel our own with ironic
fidelity, even though they are of very different origin and have been used to disguise (perhaps
even from themselves)
what seems to us
much greater guilt of oppression and cruelty. They combine these illusions with Messianic
passions that find a
paler reflection in one layer of American conscience. Looking upon their own nation as the
embodiment of innocence and justice, the Russians take it for granted that
America is the symbol of the worst form of capitalistic
injustice. Both America and Russia find it almost impossible to believe that anyone could
think
ill of them and
are persuaded that only malice could prompt suspicions
of motives so obviously virtuous. Each tends to regard the
other as the only force wilfully thwarting its dream of
bringing happiness to all mankind.

There are many perils, both for our nation and for the
world, inherent in this situation - and they do not all come
from abroad. We are exasperated by the ironic incongruities of our position. Having more
power than ever
before, America ironically enjoys less security than in the
days of her weakness. Convinced of her virtue, she finds
that even her allies accuse her of domestic vices invented
by her enemies. The liberated prove ungrateful for their
liberation, the reconstructed for their reconstruction, and
the late colonial peoples vent their resentment upon our
nation-the most innocent, we believe, of the imperial
powers. Driven by these provocations and frustrations,
there is the danger that America may be tempted to exert
all the terrible power she possesses to compel history to
conform to her own illusions. The extreme, but by no
means the only expression, would be the so-called preventive war. This would be to commit
the
worst heresy of the Marxists, with whom it is dogma that they can
compel history to conform to the pattern of their dreams by the ruthless use of force.

To save ourselves from these moral perils, Dr. Niebuhr
adjures us to disavow the pretensions and illusions of innocence derived from our national
childhood, along with
all self-righteousness, complacency, and humorless idealism. If we would understand our
plight
and prepare for
the role we must play, we must grasp the ironic implications of our history. I realize that
Niebuhr's view of human
strives is based on theology, a subject definitely beyond
my province. Whatever its theological implications - and
I have frankly never explored them - the view has a validity apart from them that appeals to
the
historian. Yet the
ironic interpretation of history is rare and difficult. In the
nature of things the participants in an ironic situation are
rarely conscious of the irony, else they would not become
its victims. Awareness must ordinarily be contributed by
an observer, a nonparticipant, and the observer must have
an unusual combination of detachment and sympathy. He
must be able to appreciate both elements in the incongruity
that go to make up the ironic situation, both the virtue and
the vice to which pretensions of virtue lead. He must not
be so hostile as to deny the element of virtue or strength on
the one side, nor so sympathetic as to ignore the vanity
and weakness to which the virtue and strength have contributed. Obviously, the qualifications
of the ironic historian are pretty hard to come by.

3

Now the South is deeply involved at present in the ironic
plight of our country as a full-fledged participant. In fact,
the headlong precipitancy with which the South has responded to the slogans of nationalism in
recent world crises
has often exceeded that of other sections of the country.
Mass response sometimes suggests the zeal of recent converts. Yet there are aspects of its
history and experience
that make the South an observer as well as a participant,
which set it apart in certain ways from the experience of
the rest of the country, and which constitute a somewhat
detached point of view. From that vantage point I believe
it is possible for the Southern historian, and indeed all
those absorbed in the study of Southern history, to make
a special contribution to the understanding of the irony
of American history, as well as that of the South's history.

Ironic implications of Southern history are not concealed
by any legend of success and victory nor by the romantic
legend of the Lost Cause. To savor the full irony of the
confident and towering ante-bellum dream of a Greek
Democracy for the New World one has only to recall the
words of a speech that Robert Barnwell Rhett made when
South Carolina seceded. The orator was picturing the
historian of 2000 AD. writing this passage: "And extending
their empire across this continent to the Pacific, and down
through Mexico to the other side of the great gulf, and
over the isles of the sea, they established an empire and
wrought out a civilization which has never been equaled
or surpassed-a civilization teeming with orators, poets,
philosophers, statesmen, and historians equal to those of
Greece and Rome-and presented to the world the glorious spectacle of a free, prosperous, and
illustrious people."
As a matter of fact, in the eyes of the true believer the coming of the Golden Age did not have
to await the year 2000.
It had already arrived, full blown, here and now. For as
Charles Sydnor has observed, "the affirmation of Southern
perfection" meant just that. Blind to evils and imperfections all around them, Southerners
described what they
saw as the ultimate in social perfection. "Fighting to defend their way of life," says Sydnor,
"they had taken refuge
in a dream world, and they insisted that others accept their
castle in the sky as an accurate description of conditions
in the South."

The shattering of this dream and the harsh education
that followed has not made the South the home of a race
of philosophers. Nor does it seem to have made Southerners any wiser than their fellow
countrymen. But it has
provided them with a different point of view from which I
they might, if they will, judge and understand their own
history and American history, and from which to view
the ironic plight of modern America.

The meaning of the contrast between the 1930's and the 1940'S is a case in point. This
transformation took
place too recently for anyone to have forgotten, though
many seem to have forgotten it entirely. In the thirties
and well into the following decade there occurred the most
thoroughgoing inquest of self-criticism that our national economy has ever undergone - not
even excepting that of
the muckraking and progressive era. No corner nor aspect
nor relationship of American capitalism was overlooked,
and no shibboleth of free enterprise went unchallenged.
The prying and probing went on at every level from the
share croppers to holding companies and international cartels. Subpoenas brought mighty
bankers and public utility
empire-builders to the witness stand. Nor was this activity
merely the work of the wild-eyed and the woolly-haired,
nor the exclusive concern of one of the major parties. It
was a popular theme of the radio, the press, the screen,
the theater, and even the pulpit. Some churches took up
the theme and incorporated it into their programs. Universities hummed and throbbed with it.
And in 1940 the
former president of a public utility holding company, then
candidate for President of the United States on the Republican ticket, made the theme a part of
his campaign.
Some of the outpouring of criticism in the thirties and
forties was misdirected, some was perhaps a bit silly. But
the electorate repeatedly endorsed with large majorities
the party that was the more closely identified with the
movement. On the whole, the people regarded it as productive of good. It was at least
indicative of a healthy and
self-confident society, uninhibited by fear.

Then in the mid-forties something happened. It happened rather suddenly. The floodstream of
criticism dwindled to a trickle and very nearly ceased altogether. It was
as if some giant sluice gate had been firmly shut. The
silence that followed was soon filled with the clamor of
voices lifted in accusation, denial, or recantation. No reputation was now secure from the
charges of the heresy hunters, the loyalty investigators, and the various committees
on public orthodoxy and conformity. Choruses were lifted in rapturous praise of the very
institutions that had been
so recently the objects of attack-and the choruses were
joined by many of the former critics.

Surveying this remarkable transformation, the historian
of the South can hardly escape the feeling that all this has
happened before-or something strongly suggestive of it:
that what happened in the 1940'S had its counterpart in the
1830'S. The earlier development was on a smaller scale,
to be sure, and there were certain other obvious discrepancies to be taken into account. The
dangers inherent in
any such comparison between historical epochs are numerous and forbidding, for certainly no
analogy is perfect
slnce no two eras, movements, nor events are entirely
alike. To suggest that modern capitalism is comparable
with slavery as a system of labor would be to indulge in the
loose and irresponsible language of polemics and propaganda. With due precaution and full
awareness of the
risks, however, one may venture a comparison, not between the two institutions, but between
the public attitudes
toward them and the transformations that took place in
those attitudes.

What happened in the South during the 1830's is too familiar a story to require elaboration
here. Before it happened, however, we know that the Jeffersonian tradition
protected and fostered a vigorous school of antislavery
thought in the South. The great Virginians of the Revolutionary generation, nearly all of whom
were on record
for emancipation, lent their prestige to the movement.
Critics of slavery spared no aspect of the peculiar institution. They spoke out against the effect
on the master as
well as on the slave; they exposed the harm done the
manners and morals of the South as well as its economy
and society. Nor were critics mere misfits and radicals.
They included men of influence and standing - politicians,
editors, professors, and clergymen. Antislavery thought
appeared in respectable newspapers and infiltrated evangelical sects of the Upper South
particularly. In the 1820's
the slave states contained a great many more antislavery
societies than the free states and furnished leadership for
the movement in the country. It would be false to suggest
that slavery was on the way out, or, in spite of some
amelioration, that the reformers made any very substantial
alterations. But it is not too much to say that this was a
society unafraid of facing its own evils. The movement
reached a brilliant climax in the free and full debates over
emancipation in the Virginia legislature during the session of 1831-1832. The effort to abolish
slavery failed there
as elsewhere. But as Joseph Robert. writes, "The institution was denounced as never before; it
was condemned
wholesale fashion by legal representatives of a slave-holding people. The vigor and breadth of
the assault provide
the debate with its most obvious distinction."

In spite of the vigor of the movement and the depth of
its root in Southern tradition, it withered away to almost
nothing in a very brief period during the middle thirties.
By 1837 there was not one antislavery society remaining in the whole South. Of the thousands
of voices that had
been raised in outspoken protest a short while before there
were to be heard only a few whispers. Opponents changed
their opinions or held their tongues. Loyalty to the South came to be defined in terms of
conformity of thought regarding one of its institutions. Past records and associates
were scrutinized closely, and the recency with which one
had denounced Northern abolitionism became a matter
of public concern. The South concentrated its energies
upon the repression of heresy and raised intellectual barricades against the ideas of a critical
and unfriendly world.
The institution that had so recently been blamed for a multitude of the region's ills was now
pictured as the secret of
its superiority and the reason for its fancied perfection.

4

Causes behind the transformation of attitudes in the
South were numerous and complex. So are the reasons
behind the transformation that has taken place in the attitudes of contemporary America.
Broadly speaking, how-
ever, both of these revolutions in public attitudes were reactions to contests for power in which
the two societies
found themselves involved. These great struggles included
many clashes of interest and issues quite apart from those concerning morals and contrasting
labor systems. Even in
the absence of ideological differences the strains of conflict would have been severe in each
case. In the 1850's
as in the 1950's, however, the crisis tended to be increasingly dramatized as a clash between
different systems of
labor-as slave labor versus free labor. In both the nineteenth-century war of words and the
twentieth-century
cold war each party to the conflict, of course, contended
that the other practiced the more immoral, wicked, and
shameless type of exploitation and that its own system was
benevolent, idealistic, and sound. Our own opinions as to
which of the parties in each crisis was the more deluded or
disingenuous in its contentions are likely to be pretty
firmly fixed already, and the problem is such that it need
not detain us.

The point is that there exists, in spite of obvious differences, a disquieting suggestion of
similarity between the
two crises and the pattern of their development. The mistakes of the South, some of which
have already been suggested, are readily apparent and their meaning open to all
who would read and understand. In the first place the
South permitted the opposition to define the issue, and
naturally the issue was not defined to the South's advantage. In the second place the South
assumed the moral
burden of proof. Because the attack centered upon slavery,
the defense rallied around that point. As the clamor increased and the emotional pitch of the
dispute intensified,
the South heedlessly allowed its whole cause, its way of
life, its traditional values, and its valid claims in numerous nonmoral disputes with the North
to
be identified with
one institution-and that an institution of which the South
itself had furnished some of the most intelligent critics.
It was a system known to have reached the natural limits
of its expansion in this country already and one which was
far gone on its way to abandonment abroad. Yet, in its
quest for friends and allies, the South made the mistake
of competing with the North for the favor of the West by insisting upon the acceptance of a
system totally unadapted to the conditions and needs of the territories and often
offensive to their moral sensibilities. And in looking to Europe for support from England and
France, powers that
might reasonably have been expected to be drawn to its
cause for reasons of self-interest, the South encountered
difficulties from the start. Some, though certainly not all,
of these difficulties were due to the fact that those countries had already repudiated the system
upon which the South had elected to stand or fall.

The knowledge that it was rapidly being isolated in the
world community as the last champion of an outmoded
system under concerted moral attack contributed to the
South's feeling of insecurity and its conviction that it was
being encircled and menaced from all sides. In place of
its old eagerness for new ideas and its out-going communicativeness the South developed a
suspicious inhospitality toward the new and the foreign, a tendency to withdraw from what it felt
to be a critical world. Because it
identified the internal security of the whole society with
the security of its labor system, it refused to permit criticism of that system. To guarantee
conformity of thought
it abandoned its tradition of tolerance and resorted to repression of dissent within its borders
and to forceful
exclusion of criticism from outside. And finally it set
about to celebrate, glorify, and render all but sacrosanct
with praise the very institution that was under attack and
that was responsible for the isolation and insecurity of the
South.

Modern America is more fortunate than the antebellum
South in having an economic system which, though threatened with abandonment by other
countries, has shown
few of the serious weaknesses and is covered with little
of the moral obloquy from which slavery suffered. And in
spite of verbal orthodoxy regarding the doctrine of capitalistic free enterprise, the American
political genius has
shown willingness to experiment extensively with heterodox cures for ills of the orthodox
system. This experimentation has, of course, been accompanied by loud protests
of loyalty to the true faith. Again, modern America is not
inherently nor necessarily handicapped in the struggle
against its powerful antagonist by all the weaknesses that
helped to doom the South to defeat.

There is, however, no cause for complacency in this good
fortune. Nor does it rule out entirely the analogy that is
here suggested. We should not deceive ourselves about
the opinions of other peoples. While we see ourselves as
morally sound and regard our good fortune as the natural
and just reward of our soundness, these views are not shared
by large numbers of people in many parts of the world.

They look on our great wealth not as the reward of our
virtue but as proof of our wickedness, as evidence of the
ruthless exploitation, not only of our own working people
but of themselves. For great masses of people who live in
abject poverty and know nothing firsthand of our system
or of industrialism of any kind are easily persuaded that
their misery is due to capitalist exploitation rather than
to the shortcomings of their own economies. Hundreds of
millions of these people are taught to believe that we are
as arrogant, brutal, immoral, ruthless, and wicked as ever
the South was pictured in an earlier war of words. Among
their leaders are extremists ready with the conclusion that
people so wicked do not deserve to live and that any means
whatever used to destroy their system is justified by the
end. One of these means is the subversive indoctrination
of our labor force for insurrection. The malevolent caricature of our society contrasts so
glaringly with what we
believe to be the demonstrable facts-not to mention the
contrast with our traditional illusions of virtue and innocence-that we are driven to
indignation.
And when we
hear faint echoes of the same propaganda from our own
allies, who no longer share our dedication to capitalism,
our indignation turns into a sense of outrage.

Fortunately modern America has not yet followed the
course of the South between 1830 and 1860, but the pattern
of response evoked by these exasperations is not a wholly
unfamiliar one. There are some unhappy similarities.
Threatened with isolation as the last important defender
of an economic system that has been abandoned or rejected without a trial by most of the
world
and that is under constant moral attack from several quarters, we have
rallied to the point of attack. We have showed a tendency
to allow our whole cause, our traditional values, and our
way of life to be identified with one economic institution.
Some of us have also tended to identify the security of
the country with the security of that institution. We have swiftly turned from a mood of
criticism to one of glorifying the institution as the secret of our superiority. We have
showed a strong disposition to suppress criticism and repel
outside ideas. We have been tempted to define loyalty as
conformity of thought, and to run grave risk of moral
and intellectual stultification.

Opposing each of these dangerous tendencies there is
still healthy and wholesome resistance struggling to reassert our ancient tradition of tolerance
and free criticism,
to maintain balance and a sense of humor, to repel the
temptation of self-righteousness and complacency, and to
reject the fallacy that the whole American cause and tradition must stand or fall with one
economic dogma. But it
is too early to say that on any one of these points the healthy
resistance is certain of triumph. In fact the fight is uphill,
and in many instances the issue is doubtful. I am not contending that successful resistance to
all
the tendencies I
have deplored will guarantee peace and solve the problems
that plagued the I950's, any more than I am sure that the
same course would have resulted as happily in the I850's.
But I believe I am safe in contending that, in view of the
South's experience, each of these tendencies should be the
subject of gravest concern.

5

In the field of diplomacy and foreign relations modern
America suffers from a divided mind, torn between one
policy that is reminiscent of the way of the South and another more suggestive of the way of
the North in the
Civil War crisis. On the one hand are those who would
meet the foreign challenge by withdrawing from a critical community of nations teeming with
heresies and, by
erecting an impregnable barricade, forcibly keep out all
alien ways, influences, and ideas. Another modern group
that has a counterpart in at least one school of Southerners
in the 1850's are those who in the I960's, heedless of world
opinion, would brook no opposition, would not cooperate
with, nor consult, other people's views, but insist that
America must be strong enough to carry her way by economic coercion or by force.
Suggestive
also of the Southern way are those who, in competing with our opponents
for the favor of uncommitted peoples, would urge upon
them institutions and abstract ideas of our own that have
little or no relevance to their real needs and circumstances.
There are those who resent as evidence of disloyalty
any defection on the part of our allies from the particular
economic faith upon which we have decided to take our
stand.

More reminiscent of the way of the North, on the other
hand, are those who hold that this is an irrepressible conflict, that a world divided against itself
cannot stand, that
the issue is essentially a moral one, that we are morally
obliged to liberate the enslaved peoples of the earth, punish the wicked oppressors, and
convert
the liberated peoples to our way of thought. The true American mission,
according to those who support this view, is a moral crusade on a world-wide scale. Such
people are likely to concede no validity whatever and grant no hearing to the
opposing point of view, and to appeal to a higher law to
justify bloody and revolting means in the name of a noble
end. For what end could be nobler, they ask, than the
liberation of man? Fortunately wiser counsel has generally prevailed, counsel which has
charted
a course of
foreign policy between the perilous extremes of isolation-
ism and world crusade. But each of the extreme courses
still has powerful advocates, and neither can yet be regarded
as a dead issue.

We have been admonished lately to heed the ironic
consequences of the characteristic American approach to
international affairs since the beginning of the present
century. The main deficiencies of our policy of the last fifty years, we are told, are our
legalistic and moralistic
approaches to foreign relations. It is possible and even
desirable, I believe, to accept the validity of this critical
insight without embracing the strictly amoral, pragmatic,
power-conscious policy of national self-interest that has
been proposed as an alternative by those who criticize the
moralistic approach. It is all too apparent that the association of the legalistic with the
moralistic concept results
in a torrent of indignation and bitterness against the law-
breaker and a blinding conviction of moral superiority to the enemy. Expressed in military
policy and war aims
these passions overwhelm reason and find no bounds short
of complete submission, unconditional surrender, and total domination of the defeated people.
The irony of the
moralistic approach, when exploited by nationalism, is
that the high motive to end injustice and immorality actually results in making war more
amoral
and horrible
than ever and in shattering the foundations of the political
and moral order upon which peace has to be built.

There would appear to be valid grounds for seeking the
origins of our moralistic aberrations in the period of the
Civil War. While both sides to that dispute indulged in
legalistic as well as moralistic pretensions, it was the
South that was predominantly legalistic and the North
that was overwhelmingly moraistic in its approach. A1though Southern historians have made
important contributions to the understanding of that crisis, it is doubtful whether anyone has
stated more aptly the ironic
consequence of the moralistic approach than a Northern
historian. "Yankees went to war," writes Kenneth Stampp,
"animated by the highest ideals of the nineteenth-century
middle classes.... But what the Yankees achieved-
for their generation at least-was a triumph not of middle-
class ideals but of middle-class vices. The most striking
products of their crusade were the shoddy aristocracy of
the North and the ragged children of the South. Among
the masses of Americans there were no victors, only the
vanquished."

Ironic contrasts between noble purposes and sordid results, between idealistic aims and
pragmatic consequences, are characteristic of reconstruction periods as well as war
crises. This is nowhere more readily apparent than in the
postwar period through which we have recently lived and
with the problems of which we are still struggling. It is especially in such times that moralistic
approaches and
high-minded war aims come home to roost. As usual, it
is only after the zeal of wartime idealism has spent itself
that the opportunity is gained for realizing the ideals for
which the war has been fought. When the idealistic aims
are then found to be in conflict with selfish and pragmatic
ends, it is the ideals that are likely to be sacrificed. The
probability of moral confusion in reconstruction policy
is increased when a nation finds itself called on to gird for
a new world moral crusade before the reconstruction con-
sequent upon the last is fairly launched. Opportunities
for moral confusion are still further multiplied when the
new crusade promises to be fought in alliance with the
public enemies of the previous moral crusade and when
the new enemy happens to have been an ally in the previous crusade.

Americans have in common the memories of an earlier
experiment with reconstruction and are generally conscious of some of the shortcomings of
that
effort. But
again, the South experienced that same historic episode
from a somewhat different point of view. Once Southern
historians have purged their minds of rancor and awakened out of a narrow parochialism they
should be in a
singularly strategic position to teach their fellow countrymen something of the pitfalls of
radical
reconstruction:
of the disfranchisement of old ruling classes and the indoctrination of liberated peoples, of the
occupation of
conquered territory and the eradication of racial dogma,
of the problems of reunion and the hazards of reaction.
They should at least have a special awareness of the ironic
incongruities between moral purpose and pragmatic result, of the way in which laudable aims
of
idealists can be
perverted to sordid purposes, and of the readiness with
which high-minded ideals can be forgotten.

With all her terrible power and new responsibilities,
combined with her illusions of innocence and her legends
of immunity from frustration and defeat, America stands
in greater need than she ever did of understanding her own
history. Our European friends, appalled by the impetuosity
and na‹vet‚ of some of our deeds and assumptions, have
attributed our lack of historical sophistication to our lack of a history - in their sense of the
word. America's apparent
immunity to the tragic and ironic aspects of man's fate -
that charmed and fabled immunity that once made America the Utopia of both the common
men and the philosophers of Europe-has come to be pictured as Europe's
curse. For the fear that haunts Europeans is the fear that
America's lack of a common basis of experience and suffering will blind her to the true nature
of their dilemmas and
end by plunging them into catastrophe. But the Europeans
are not entirely right. America has a history. It is only that the tragic aspects and the ironic
implications of that history have been obscured by the national legend of success and victory and
by the perpetuation of infant illusions of innocence and virtue.

America has had cynical disparagement of her ideals from foreign, unfriendly, or hostile
critics.
But she desperately needs criticism from historians of her own who
can penetrate the legend without destroying the ideal, who
can dispel the illusion of pretended virtue without denying the genuine virtues. Such historians
must have learned
that virtue has never been defined by national or regional
boundaries, and that morality and rectitude are not the
monopolies of factions or parties. They must reveal the
fallacy of a diplomacy based on moral bigotry, as well as
the fallacy of one that relies on economic coercion through
the fancied indispensability of favored products. Their
studies would show the futility of erecting intellectual barricades against unpopular ideas, of
employing censorship
and repression against social criticism, and of imposing
the ideas of the conqueror upon defeated peoples by force
of arms. Such historians would teach that economic systems, whatever their age, their
respectability, or their apparent stability, are transitory and that any nation which
elects to stand or fall upon one ephemeral institution has already determined its fate. The
history they write would also constitute a warning that an overwhelming conviction in the
righteousness of a cause is no guarantee of its
ultimate triumph, and that the policy which takes into
account the possibility of defeat is more realistic than one
that assumes the inevitability of victory.

Such historians must have a rare combination of detachment and sympathy, and they must
have
established
some measure of immunity from the fevers and prejudices of their own times, particularly
those
bred of nationalism, with all its myths and pretensions, and those born of hysteria that closes the
mind to new ideas of all kinds.
America might find such historians anywhere within her
borders, North as well as South. But surely some of them
might reasonably be expected to arise from that region
where it is a matter of common knowledge that history
has happened to their people in their part of the world.